Hi
I used to do photograph with an SLR 20 years ago. This will be my first DSLR. My primary reason for getting one is to do large format landscape photography, although undoubtedly I will want to zoom on wildlife also. I read everything here and am kind of leaning toward the Olympus E510 and Sony A100 because of the anti-dust and anti-shake features. Are these cameras adequate for very large format prints suitable for hanging on the wall?

Which model and type of lens would be the best choice? It sounds like a super wide angle lens isn't absolutely necessary, but could come in handy if I want to spend $600-$1500 on the lens.

This site is amazing! The only thing I can think of they could use is a listing of different types of photography and what types of cameras are best suited to them.

The print size is dependant on the resolution of the camera, so if you're comparing, say, 10 Mpixel DSLRs, their images will all be able to be enlarged to the same degree before you start noticing a loss in quality. So in this respect, the Sony A100, Olympus E-510, Canon 400D, Nikon D80 and Pentax K10D are essentially on a level playing field.

What sort of size prints did you want to make, and from what distance will they be viewed?

You're right to consider a model with anti-dust and anti-shake, but there's no one camera that's necessarily better for landscapes or wildlife, or indeed most other types of photography. They'll all be equally good for most types, although if you want to zoom-in a lot on wildlife, you'll need a powerful lens - so you'd either be looking at, say, a 70-300mm in addition to a normal (say 18-55mm) kit lens, or a single superzoom like an 18-200mm which does it all.

Also while the Sony A100, Olympus E-510 and Pentax K10D all have built-in anti-shake, the other manufacturers offer it in optional lenses, and there's pros and cons to each system. If it's built-in, it'll work on any lens you attach for free, but you won't see the stabilising effect through the viewfinder - you just have to trust that it's working. If it's built into the lens though, you will see the reassuring stabilising effect through the viewfinder, but you'll have to pay for it on every lens you want it. Swings and roundabouts really!

As for anti-dust, none of them work 100%, so you will need to get used to using a blower from time to time - see here:

So really any of the current crop of DSLRs will do what you want, so it's a case of weighing up their differences in features, price, and crucially their look and feel. I'd strongly recommend going into a store and picking up a selection of models, looking through the viewfinder, pressing the buttons and taking some shots. I guarentee one or two will feel MUCH better to you than the others, and these are the ones which should go to the top of your list!

Thanks Gordon. I would like to make large prints. I've heard the theory that with a larger print you don't need as much resolution because people aren't looking at it up close. I guess I'm hoping that's true!
With a 10 mp, could you do a 20x24 print of a landscape? Actually I want to do larger ones also but I figured I could stitch a bunch together to make a wider panorama.

So I guess the question is, is 10mp good enough for this size of prints, or does one really need a medium or large format, or 20-30mp, or to use film instead of digital. Or at that point does the quality of the lens have more effect?

And I also wondered if 4:3 would be worse than standard format, although maybe that's not enough of an issue to make a difference.

There are websites where photographers say digital can't approach the qualtiy of film, medium format is still far superior for large prints, etc. And there are those who say the opposite! I guess I'm probably at the point of just buying a DLSR and trying it, and seeing for myself.

You can print a picture from a mobile phone the size of a house, but it sure wouldn't look pretty! But here's some guidelines...

A postcard sized photographic print is normally made with 300 pixels per inch. So if it measured 6x4in, you'd need 1800x1200 pixels - which is about 2 megapixels.

A typical 10 Megapixel camera produces images with 3872x2592 pixels. Divide those numbers by 300 and you'll get approximately 13x9in. So if you want to maintain the same 'photographic quality' as those postcard prints, you'll be limited to 13x9in with a 10 Megapixel image.

But that's for a really high quality print which will stand up to close examination from less than one foot away. As you stand further away, or become less demanding, you can get away with less pixels per printed inch.

Personally speaking I reckon 10 Megapixel images can make pretty nice looking A3 prints. Several forum members here have made some big prints and been pleased with the results.

I've also seen some really big prints made from 10-15 Megapixel images and they can look awesome. The printer software can invent new pixels to fill the page, so while there's no actual extra detail there, at least you don't see blocky edges.

Did anyone see Yann Arthus-Bertrand's Earth from the Air exhibition featuring prints measuring about 2.5x2m? Most of those were made from 35mm film, which arguably has no more than 13-15 Megapixels worth of real detail under the very best conditions, but those prints looked pretty darned good!

So I reckon you could make some really nice looking big prints with a 10 megapixel camera, and like you say, for the maximum quality, try taking several as a panorama (best to do this with the camera on its side), so you can create a 40 megapixel image! So that'd give you medium format resolution at a budget DSLR price!

Gordon

PS - when does the snow come to Tahoe for skiing? I hear it's a pretty nice place to visit!

Hi Cindi, I've been doing A3 prints a lot and making booklets from them. What I can say is that the "grain" of a perfect 10MPix-photo is fine enough for very impressive A3 prints viewed from 30cm distance.
If you go for even larger prints I would allways assume that the vieweing distance grows proportionally and thus the visible quality stays the same.

The word to be noticed in the above text is "perfect": At these kinds of magnification every glitch in quality will be noticed. So 10MPix is enough, but you also need to
- use low ISO
- avoid camera shake
- avoid motion blur
- have a pin-sharp lens
This was why I was looking into a lot of wide-angle zoom-lenses to come up with a perfect lens for landscapes. See here.